Dive-In-Justice is launching Season 3 on May 19th! Listen to the season promo and join Shadiin and Delma’s bi-weekly pod as they examine the role of money, resources, and access in relationship to Justice. How do we seek one without forsaking the other? We don’t know either, but we’re gonna spend Season 3 talking thru it together.
Come join for the conversation. It’ll be interesting, honest, funny, and heartbreaking all at once and we are HERE for it!
Co-hosts Delma Jackson and Dr. Shadiin Garcia welcome a wide range of activists, scholars, healers, philosophers, and organizers to explore the ways we want to be in community, and the various -roadblocks that have historically impeded our progress.
From systemic injustice to internalized oppression, apathy, and trauma, Shadiin, Delma and guests pull back the layers of struggle within social progress, and dream together, even as we remind one another that our personal tragedies, triumphs, and healing will inform our ability to create a better world.
Center for Whole Communities and Shoreline Consulting is proud to present Seasons 1 through 3 of Dive-In-Justice: the podcast that explores “building ideal communities with our less than ideal selves.”
Want to catch up before Season 3 starts?
All episodes of Season 1 and Season 2 are now streaming. We invite you to listen! If you love the idea of building intentional community, if you love history and pop-culture, if you want to dream into a society where intersectionality is baked into the culture, the Dive-In-Justice POD is for YOU. You can watch the introduction here.
Who’s invited? Shadiin says, “Delma and I enter the world in Black and Brown bodies, and we want to center that perspective. And if you’re white, we want you to be present too. We want you to listen, we want you to bear witness.” That’s an invitation to be present in solidarity, rather than show up just to extract meaning.
Wondering where to start listening? Scroll down for descriptions of current and past episodes.
In the Season 2 finale, our hosts open with a whole season’s worth of bitter love and warm hostility.
They discuss balancing workloads, family, and what it means to live in head vs the heart. Shadiin discusses comfort zones and how we might benefit from finding the right balance between feeling stretched, growing, and over-extending.
Shadiin and Delma zoom out and discuss some of the biggest themes running throughout Season 2 and the show in general with a special focus on land acknowledgements and how we might keep them relevant and focused on raising awareness, as opposed to becoming another vehicle for performance. Our hosts also discuss how we hold the the work:
Finally, our hosts discuss their vision for Season 3 and take a moment to recognize all those who’ve supported us to this point.
Shadiin and Delma open S2 Episode 9 with warmth, love, and light. Or…not.
They move into a conversation about the ways their own inside jokes have potentially caused harm to some of our listeners–which leads to a broader analysis of how we might come to conclusions about what’s acceptable and what’s not–and to what extent we’re even equipped to have those conversations with one another.
We discuss the isolation and shaming that can come from our triggers encountering our inability to skillfully hold these conversations.
DIJ welcomes Scott Nine, Assistant Superintendent for the Oregon Department of Education’s Office of Education Innovation and Improvement.
Scott discusses his journey through his childhood in a faith community, grappling with the politics of whiteness within his own family, and wrestling with working to constantly expand his world view.
Scott draws on these narratives as he moves into his current role and his vulnerability when working on justice issues as a white, cisgender male, and how his commitment to equity rests in a willingness to keep doing “the work” even as you know you’re going to get things wrong along the way.
After confessing profound pettiness, Scott joins Shadiin and Delma in analyzing the role of ism’s articulated by celebrities and how our feelings about their words inform us.
Delma & Shadiin open the episode reflecting on Delma’s obvious high quality as reflected by the quality of his guests, and move from there straight into their usual respectful dialogue.
DiveInJustice S2 Ep 8 guest is Adrian Massey, a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who served for over 18 years and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for excellence in combat. Adrian is a lifelong friend of Delma’s.
Adrian takes us on a journey through his challenges and triumphs. He reflects on freedom, friendship, and faith and the power of poetry to “break up” otherwise barren soil. Adrian is also a published author of a collection of poetry, a book entitled “A Soldier’s Poetic Response: A Slice of His Life.” Learn more here.
Unless we’re moving in somewhat in the same direction, at a fundamental level, America’s never going to achieve what we set out to achieve.
– Lt. Col. Adrian Massey in S2 Ep8
in Season 2 Episode 7, we discover just how well-versed Delma is in the nuances of Indigenous nations.
Shadiin ponders the toll of white supremacy on BIPOC health over the long haul. ZThey both discuss the importance of rest in the face of ongoing social turmoil, oppression, and upheaval.
The DIJ hosts welcome Lori Tapahonso (Diné/Acoma Pueblo). Lori is a public relations specialist, a teacher, a consultant, a storyteller, a jeweler, and an actor.
Lori discusses her role as the Native American Program Coordinator at Lane Community College where she manages the development and implementation of programming specifically geared towards Native students at Lane.
Lori describes her strong tribal college background having worked at Haskell, SIPI (Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute) and six campuses of Diné College. The three also discuss the role of media representation and what it means to see yourself represented on screen for better and for worse.
Shadiin and Delma open by discussing whiteness, from Jan 6, to friendships, to dating, work life and beyond. They discuss how aging impacts our ability to show up and hold difficult spaces-even when they’re filled by people who look just like us.
Our fearless hosts reflect on the enraging nature of trying to figure out the nuances of community while trying to live in white supremacy.
DIJ welcomes to the show Jomo Kheru (Brian Carey Sims): founder and executive director at Jomoworks, Jomo Kheru (Brian Carey Sims) is a media psychologist and social entrepreneur invested in African liberation with over 15 years of faculty and administrative experience in university teaching and learning, faculty governance, and social and instructional media.
He is founder and executive director at Jomoworks, an education management consulting firm specializing in University / K-12 partnership development.
Jomoworks combines the knowledge and expertise of a research institute with the skills of an education management consulting firm to serve as a trusted partner to school districts and universities worldwide.
He is also a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida A&M University where his research focuses on the implications of media for individuals, families, and communities of African descent.
We discuss everything from Hip Hop to African Liberation, Metaphysics, and the broadness of the human experience binding us all together.
In Ep 5, Delma and Shadiin take care through the latest wave of COVID as they dive deep into an opening debate on cultural appropriation, especially around who is capable of appropriating based on where whiteness is present and how systems of power really work.
They are joined by guest Vernice Miller-Travis, Environmental Justice leader, founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice and Executive Vice President alongside Shadiin at Metropolitan Group.
Vernice is one of the nation’s most respected thought leaders on environmental justice and the interplay of civil rights and environmental policy to build a social movement that is rooted at the intersection of race, environment, economics, social justice and public health. She was a contributing author to the landmark report “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States” and was awarded the Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award by the Sierra Club.
On Ep 4, Delma and Shadiin discuss the ways in which we can sometimes harbor ill-will toward people in our lives and what constitutes a reasonable expectation for dealing with it.
Guests Stevi Atkins and Teresa Springer of Wellness Services INC, an AIDS service organization based out of Flint, MI, discuss the history and future of HIV work, the culture they’ve worked to cultivate for clients and staff, and how their personal histories have informed their life’s work.
Stevi has worked in the field of HIV for over 20 years as an HIV STI educator, an outreach worker, an HIV tester, medical case manager, HIV prevention manager before eventually coming on as CEO of Wellness Services, Inc. in 2010.
Teresa is Director of Programs is a writer of grants, the manager of programs, the shaker of systems, reject of racist, homophobic, transphobic regimes, denouncer of discrimination and professional side-eyer of shady people and lover of equitable solutions.
On Ep 3, Shadiin takes a break from giving Delma a hard time, because Kavitha Rao and Mohamed Chakaki are on from CWC to talk about some deep topics.
The guests and hosts speak to the intersection of anger and gender, how it isn’t radical to center love and story, and how embodied practice and partnership are part of moving through everything we feel.
In Season 2. Ep. 2, DIJ hosts dive deep with guest, Keith Catone, who has a deep background in education and organizing. Keith is Executive Director of Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE).
and speak about these places we call schools – what do they do? How do we listen to the young people who refuse to play along, the ones we call troublemakers? How can we tap into our ancestral wisdom so that schools can be places where everybody can show up and thrive, not just survive.
In Season 2, Shadiin, Delma, and our brilliant guests continue to normalize healing our wounds and grappling with our imperfections.
While many of us treasure the idea of community, we can often make mistakes along the way and witness some of the core tenets of white supremacy show up as we attempt to course correct—often resulting in splintering and further isolation.
We might want to stamp out norms like: Perfectionism, Paternalism, Either-or-thinking, and Power hoarding…and we are also products of those norms and are just as quick to succumb to them as anyone else. We’ll be asking each other, what can we do differently so that we can continue to heal while staying in community together.
Season 2 of Dive-In-Justice will welcome brilliant activists and thinkers from all over the planet, and feature voices from Center for Whole Communities, as well as the METGroup, and many more. We launched it November 5th, 2021.
In our Season 2 Opener: Holding Hypocrisy, Hope & Healing, Shadiin and Delma open season 2 with loving yet (knowing them) begrudging greetings after the long hiatus following Season 1. They reflect on national conversations around critical race theory and what it means to be a facilitator in spaces where the concept of racial justice is still controversial. Our hosts also discuss what the pod was in season 1, what they hope it can become in season 2, and how they hope to grow with their guests in the process. Finally, they grapple with the nuances of self and community, and invite a rigorous examination of what it means to be self-aware while holding space.
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Not caught up on Season 1? Our TWELFTH episode awaits: our first Season Finale.
Delma and Shadiin provide a retrospective look at all we learned together over the past months from our amazing guests.
When we’re committed to the idea of ourselves as being a particular thing, a particular identity and all that comes with that identity — all of the political, moral, emotional, and behavioral obligations that we take on in order to gain access, maintain security, and claim by a particular political realm, political home, political family, identity family — we do ourselves a disservice in that we miss the bigger belonging”
– Khalif Williams, S1 Ep. 2 guest
The season finale provides highlights, reflections, and important points from past episodes – what really stuck out to us from our guests, what might have changed us, or what elements of their wisdom we might be taking with us well into the future.
We want to thank everyone who has joined us for Season One, and especially thank those who’ve donated to the show through Patreon!
Catch up on our ELEVENTH episode: Laureate Limericks, Holding Healing, and Guarding our Gardens w/ Kellie Richardson
Delma and Shadiin dive into the heatwaves people are experiencing caused by climate change, returning to being social, and the happiness of a true 40-hour work week, which is all too uncommon in the public service and nonprofit realms. Kellie Richardson joins as a guest this week, a writer and artist educator born and raised in Tacoma Washington.
Her work explores the intersection of race, class and gender with a specific emphasis on themes of love, loss and longing. As the 2017 to 2019 Tacoma Poet Laureate, Kellie has worked to ensure literary arts are both accessible to and representative of the diversity of that community. Kellie has authored two collections of poetry, “What Us Is” and “The Art of Naming My Pain,” published by Blue Cactus Press. Find her at brownbetty.org and her works at bluecactuspress.com.
Richardson explores the healing power of disruption, reclamation, and joy, and the criticality of rage, grief, and chaos. She centers the beauty and power of everyday folk, and puts some funk into the dread we call survival.
Don’t miss our TENTH episode: Allyship & Apologetics, Whiteness & Whitewashing, Connection & Community w Jeff Bean.
Delma and Shadiin dive into what it feels like to be put in the position of policing people claiming to be Native American and talk with lifelong educator and activist, Jeff Bean.
“Jeff Bean is a hometown hero of mine who is currently working with future teachers… I’ve always found Jeff to be full of love, courage, lots of wisdom.” says Delma.
At 16 years old. I had a social studies teacher give me The Autobiography of Malcolm X. And as a white kid in Sturgis, Michigan, which was an all white rural community, that was the first time I understood that there was a world outside of my little town.”
– Jeff Bean, Ep 10 guest
Jeff also happens to be the first White person interviewed on the show and is a retired teacher who spent 9 years at Detroit Catholic Central and 25 years at Flint Community Schools. The hosts and guest go deep into White nationalism and supremacy, and the national racial reckoning currently playing out.
Dive-In-Justice premiered February 26, 2021, with new episodes on a bi-weekly basis. DIJ is a co-production of the Center for Whole Communities and Shoreline Consulting. For companion writing on these themes, check out the CWC blog.
Our gratitude to Jenni Kotting for the Dive-In-Justice graphic design and outreach strategy, and to Doug Fearnside for audio engineering and podcast editing.
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Art by Alixa Garcia
